Letter of Mrs. Barbara Spinelli to the Eurodeputies for the setting up of an intergroup supporting the European citizens' initiative New Deal 4 Europe.

Dear colleagues,

As you are certainly aware, the “New Deal 4 Europe” Citizens’ Initiative is collecting the signatures required to ask the European Commission for an extraordinary plan for sustainable development and employment that may be able to relaunch the European economy, create new jobs and work towards a Europe based on social solidarity, sustainable development and participatory democracy.

The goals indicated by the campaign may be summed up in the enactment of an extraordinary programme of EU investments for the production and the financing of European public goods (renewable energy sources, research, innovation, infrastructural networks, environment-friendly agriculture, environmental protection and protection of cultural heritage, etc.); in the establishment of an extraordinary European solidarity fund to create new jobs, especially for young people; in an increase in the European budget’s own resources through a taxation of financial transactions and a carbon tax.

For the purpose of supporting this important Citizenship Initiative, which many of us have made an effort to back during the election campaign, I propose that we set up an informal network of MEPs, that is, a New Deal 4 Europe networking group.

It is a matter of initiating a parliamentary battle that may lead to a modification of the infrastructure investment plan presented by Jean-Claude Juncker, asking for it to be based on a substantial increase of EU`s “own resources”, rather than on what remains of the “structural funds” or on EIB funding. In fact, Mr. Juncker’s plan is entirely insufficient from a quantitative perspective and, at the qualitative level, it eludes what should be its priority task, indicated by New Deal 4 Europe as the introduction of a double tax on financial transactions and on CO2 emissions:the purpose beingto embark upon a different kind of development from that which we have seen so far – and which has brought us to the current recession-related crisis -and to tackle simultaneously an increasingly serious crisis in the global climate balance. If achieved, the New Deal will make it possible to win back many citizens’ support for the European project.

At this point a mobilisation is necessary, in order to revive this campaign in the media, considering that the signatures that have been collected so far are still a long distance away from the target that is required, in spite of important backing recorded from the milieux of culture, politics and associations.

Hence, the New Deal 4 Europe informal network should take on the task of framing and coordinating a concrete action to support the campaign to collect signatures, undertaking awareness-raising initiatives capable of imposing coverage of the ND4E European Citizens’ Initiativeupon the European media’s agenda.

We have 160 days left to achieve the goal of collecting one million signatures for the New Deal for Europe.